


Waiting in the Wings

by SegaBarrett



Category: All About Eve (1950)
Genre: F/F, Kissing, Plotting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25778044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Eve digs her claws in.
Relationships: Margo Channing/Eve Harrington
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9
Collections: Limited Theatrical Release 2020





	Waiting in the Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onedogtown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onedogtown/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own All About Eve, and I make no money from this.

Eve’s heart was beating, and she was finding it hard to suck in her breath, finding it hard not to move and twitch. Her eyes never left Margo’s, and she studied her, every little move, every tiny sway, as if she had a camera and was affixing it all to film to watch over and over again. Of course, as with film and unlike theater, her voice didn’t quite match up with the picture – sometimes she wasn’t sure that she wasn’t hearing Margo out of sync.

But Eve would not be out of sync. She was determined to smash it all together. She already had the perfect name chosen, after all. Now it would just take some slight – some slight will, most of all. But she could smile through it; in fact, she would have to smile through it, and she would thrive.

She had been invited inside the inner sanctum, and she had never thought that it would have even been possible. She had to wonder how Margo saw her – just as a nice kid (even though, to her, the “nice kid” had been married and widowed, not so much a kid anymore, beaten down by life a bit – that part was true), maybe? Someone who would stay in line, who wouldn’t make waves for Margo? Someone she didn’t have to fear as a rival?

“You can help me around the house,” Margo crooned as she opened the door, letting her in. Eve wondered how, upon entering Margo’s home she didn’t burst into flames. Perhaps it was all a dream.

She must have looked happy; she tried to look happy; she was happy.

She tried not to notice the things, all the things that Margo had, and she had quite a few, none of which she seemed to ever acknowledge. She was able to float, to meld into the surroundings. 

It seemed seamless when she did it – really, now that she was close up, Margo had always been flawless, since the first time Eve had heard her name, and since the moment Eve had first seen her up on stage.

It hadn’t been San Francisco, not really, but when she thought of the moment, somehow it was. She could conjure up the sounds, the feel, the night of a city in which she had never set foot. That was the kind of thing an actress was meant to do, wasn’t it?

“You’ll be answering phones, mostly,” Margo told her. She let her hand flutter up like a little bird’s wing as she indicated the desk. “And other tasks, as needed. And as needed may entail quite a bit. Are you sure you’re up to the challenge?”

 _She is so very fragile,_ Eve let herself notice. 

“I’m just so grateful. I’ll do my very best.”

_So breakable._

***

Eve sat at the desk, her fingers traveling over the smooth metal of the phone. Sometimes, when Margo stepped out, she would place her fingers in the hole of the rotary dial and pull it back, dialing random numbers and then hanging up as soon as she heard the “hello?” on the other end. She dared herself to talk, dared herself to tell them to remember her name, to remember that she was going to be a star one day.

Every time the phone rang, she would pick it up, letting her voice trill out, “Margo Channing’s office. Eve Harrington speaking.”

The first week, she allowed her voice to go up a few octaves – the excited young woman who couldn’t believe she was working for her hero. The intern set to work, doing the real jobs but being considered to be playing at the actual role.

An understudy. 

Then, she began to watch. To adjust. To grow.

***

By the time Margo let her come into her bedroom – ostensibly to observe what an awful job her maid did preparing the bed – Eve was certain that she could dream Margo’s dreams if she tried hard enough.

Eve looked happy all over again, with a side order of amazed. And she was.

Margo had seemed so high up in the air, so unattainable, as if she had always been up on that stage. To see her complain about something so silly like any old normal person with a grudge was both fascinating and disappointing all in one.

Eve resolved to never let anyone see her complain about a thing. She would forever be gracious, would forever seem as if nothing could ever deter her out of a perfect mood. After all, if – _no, when_ \- she got to the top, what more would she ever want? What more would she ever even need?

“Eve, dear, won’t you please come along and sit beside me?”

Eve resolved not to seem too eager. She must keep her cards close – must stop the sound of her heart beating.

A true actress would never give anything away, after all. If she got too close, Margo might see beneath the veneer.

If she scraped the paint on the surface, Eve needed to make sure that all that was left underneath was the never-dulled sheen of beauty.

She focused on gliding, not stepping, over to the bed. She let one of her hands snake downward, touching the sheet and trying not to tremble at it – but that was easier than just looking Margo in the eye.

“Sit beside me, my dear,” Margo said again, shifting back against the wall. She had a book in her hands and was looking up at Eve. Studying her, maybe. Looking at her looking back.

Eve had no other choice – at least, that was what she would tell herself later because (not good to get emotionally invested, not good to allow herself to think of what Margo must feel underneath it all, because then she would be thinking… she should not be thinking about any of that) she wanted to get into that bed and wanted to lay beside her, and feel her presence beside her. 

So she sat. The pillow was propped up behind her, allowing her to sink against it, allowing her to settle her head against Margo’s shoulder and not feel the least bit of discomfort about it.

“You are just indispensable, Eve,” Margo whispered. “I don’t know exactly how I was getting along without you. Sometimes I think… this world wants us to fail. It wants to split us apart, doesn’t it? And the only way to fight against that is to have…” She hesitated, there, and it made sense. Would she call Eve a friend and make the mistake of allowing her to be an equal, or would she call her an employee but seem to be lying, considering your employees were often not in your bed?

Then again, neither were most people’s friends.

Finally, Margo ended with, “Is to have people who you can trust, implicitly.”

It was odd to Eve, though, that she didn’t take her eyes off of her as she said it.

***

The easiest place to watch her was the place she was supposed to watch her – the stage. 

Having a place in the wings not only allowed Eve to watch Margo glide across the stage (oh, and she noticed those little slips, too, the moments where Margo’s mind was wandering – she knew her well enough now to catch each of those) but to watch her snap at the prop master as she moved backstage, to watch her demand water be given to her, to watch her face crumble ever so slightly when things had come a hair’s breadth away from collapsing entirely.

She tucked little things away, behind her ear, and in her heart. The little things that she noticed about the way that Margo walked – and, especially, the few times she saw her run. The movement of her feet, when they quickened, made Eve wonder – how did anyone manage to look gracefully while running, at all?

The answer must be never to run, but rather, always to glide.

Eve wouldn’t run even if there was a fire chasing her, she decided.

She would be better than Margo one day – she must note every single flaw and adapt it, eliminate it. Unlike Margo, she had no margin of error.

None at all.

***

Friendship, Eve felt, was a double-edged sword, and after all she had never had a friend like Margo.

Friendship was war, she considered. It was gathering up enough evidence to use against her before she could use it first, stocking enough ammunition to be sure to be able to live through the siege.

She began to take a place in Margo’s bed more often – slowly, carefully. 

“Eve, be a dear,” began to dissolve away, until she didn’t need to ask it anymore and it was simply implied, the same way all of the “Eve, please answer that call” and “Eve, please clear that away” discussion had become.

Eve was able, after all, to do it all.

And then she wasn’t merely sitting in the bed, but lying in it, and none of the household staff bothered to breathe a word because – when they did talk about it, amongst themselves in half-hearted words here and there, broken words not to be overheard – it seemed when each backtracked through their memories that, perhaps, she had always been there all along.

Such was the power, Eve thought to herself, of friendship.

When Margo turned one day and kissed her, Eve sank into it, considering that she couldn’t have planned it as well if she had planned it all by the letter (when really she had – the signs she had been sending, the feet turned towards her, the hands cupped on her shoulder… It was a dance, a careful one).

And she realized that underneath the power of friendship, there was something even more.

And she wondered if she could suck Margo’s breath right through her lips if she dared.


End file.
